Point sprites allow real-time computer graphics to create an on-screen display of realistic smoke, flames, dust, water, and other artistic visual effects. Point sprites are generated from a set of three-dimensional (3D) points that are submitted to a graphics card. The on-screen size of the pixels included in each 3D point is adjusted individually to provide an illusion that more geometry than a single point is being drawn. The 3D point is drawn as an axis-aligned square with a specific edge length.
The OpenGL application programming interface (API) and Direct3D (D3D) API from Microsoft of Redmond, Wash. include mechanisms for drawing real-time computer graphics that include point sprites on a display screen. However, with the ever increasing demand for display of real-time computer graphics in a web browser, the computer graphics may be provided to the computing device in the OpenGL API when the graphics card in the computing environment that processes real-time graphics uses the D3D API or vice versa. As a result, cross-platform emulation of the real-time graphics commands between the OpenGL API and D3D API is essential for the user to experience the desired computer graphics effects. However, conventional systems are not designed for cross-platform point sprite emulation of point sprites having a size greater than one.